Prenda Law, a copyright litigation firm that has sued thousands of anonymous Internet users for sharing pornographic videos, has sought the dismissal of a California judge after the judge ordered the firm to answer charges that it engaged in identity theft. Prenda charges that the judge, Otis Wright, is biased against pornographic copyright holders seeking to enforce their rights.

When we last covered the Prenda Law saga, defense attorney Morgan Pietz had alerted a California federal court to allegations by a Minnesota man that Prenda had named him as the CEO of two of its shell companies without his knowledge or permission. One of those shell companies had sued Pietz's client for sharing a pornographic video on BitTorrent. So Pietz asked Judge Wright to order Prenda to answer questions about these allegations. Specifically, is the Alan Cooper named as the CEO of two litigious shell companies the same Alan Cooper who has told a Minnesota court he fears his identity has been used without his permission?

So far, Prenda attorney Brett Gibbs has played coy. In a phone conversation with Pietz last month, Gibbs averred that "I am sure there are hundreds of Alan Coopers in this world." The day after Christmas, Judge Wright ordered Prenda to finally give the court a straight answer about the identity of its client.

But rather than answering the question, the firm launched an attack on Judge Wright himself. Prenda says that Wright is too biased against pornographic copyright litigators to provide Prenda with a fair hearing. "Honorable Judge Otis D. Wright, II simply abhors plaintiffs who attempt to assert their rights with respect to online infringement of pornography copyrights," Prenda wrote in a brief filed on Monday.

There's little doubt that Judge Wright is skeptical of mass pornographic copyright lawsuits. Last summer, Judge Wright rejected an attempt by pornography publisher Malibu Media to sue multiple defendants with a single lawsuit, a tactic that allows plaintiffs to minimize the filing fees they have to pay. Judge Wright's ruling was scathing:

The federal courts are not cogs in a plaintiff’s copyright-enforcement business model. The Court will not idly watch what is essentially an extortion scheme, for a case that plaintiff has no intention of bringing to trial. By requiring Malibu to file separate lawsuits for each of the Doe Defendants, Malibu will have to expend additional resources to obtain a nuisance-value settlement—making this type of litigation less profitable. If Malibu desires to vindicate its copyright rights, it must do it the old-fashioned way and earn it.

Wright has shown a similar degree of skepticism in Prenda's own cases. Prenda represents the shell companies "AF Holdings" and "Ingenuity 13," both of which name Alan Cooper as their CEO. When those lawsuits were transferred to Judge Wright's courtroom from another judge, he issued an order blocking pending subpoenas until the plaintiffs convinced him that they were justified. Then, with that issue still pending, he ordered the plaintiffs to explain why the lawsuit shouldn't be dismissed for failure to serve notice on the defendants.

Prenda says the reason it hasn't served notice on the plaintiffs is that Judge Wright has blocked them from subpoenaing ISPs to obtain their contact information. And Prenda says the short turn-around time Wright gave Prenda to respond to the order—the order was issued on December 20 with a response due on December 27—suggests that Judge Wright isn't interested in giving Prenda a fair shot.

Judge Wright is somewhat unusual in the vitriolic language he has used to describe porn trolls' business model. But he is hardly the first judge to express concerns about their litigation tactics. In November, a Florida judge accused Prenda of "attempted fraud on the court." In May, a New York judge decried the "blizzard" of trolling lawsuits. Other judges in Florida and Illinois have issued rulings that used less inflammatory language but showed a similar skepticism of the basic porn-trolling business model.

Meanwhile, a month after the Minnesotan Alan Cooper raised concerns about his identity being stolen, Prenda has yet to respond to those charges. A skeptic might wonder if the effort to remove Judge Wright from the case might be a stalling tactic to avoid answering the questions about Alan Cooper's identity.

It is like arguing a referee in a football game should be removed because he is biased against holding.

Hey sometimes they are biased one way or another, but that's just too bad. This is what the appeals system is for. While ballsy, accusing the judge of being biased certainly doesn't help them. At best it does nothing, at worst they just dug their grave a little bit deeper.

Could they just subpoena the 'CEO' to appear in court - and it's refused just toss the case? (and maybe notify a prosecutor about said identity theft?).

That wouldn't take place until the discovery (fact finding) process starts, which could be months away, at which point the plaintiffs could stall even longer on getting the person to testify. Since every day this goes on costs the defendant more money, I'm sure Prenda is just trying to prolong this out to make it more economical for the defendant to settle, rather than fight it.

IDK, the one-week deadline that the judge issued might be a valid point of contention, considering that Christmas was smack dab in the middle of that time. Then again, providing evidence that your CEO is a real person who actually acknowledges that he's CEO shouldn't be difficult to pull together quickly if that really is the case.

Dilatory motions and tactics are the bread and butter of the judicial industry. Between acrimonious divorces, patent farming and mass piracy, the Carreons of the world are laughing all the way to the bank. Or public office.

Porn is such an immoral industry that it shouldn't have any legal protection whatsoever. I understand that under the principles of freedom of speech (also known as the Westborough Baptist Church protection law) you can't make it illegal to produce but I don't see any issue with not offering any legal protection to make money off of it.

Porn is such an immoral industry that it shouldn't have any legal protection whatsoever.

The law, ideally, is not concerned with morality or lack thereof, since morality is not a monolithic, uniform thing - it varies from person to person. Lack of morality isn't illegal (even if we agree that a particular act isn't moral, which isn't a given), and isn't a valid reason for people to just straight-up lose rights.

*sigh*.. when will the insanity end and common sense prevail? Ars quoted the judge, and he was very clear that he had no problem with copyright holders enforcing their copyrights.. what he has a problem with is people abusing the judicial system to threaten settlements.

I understand why we have this issue.. the legal system is SUPPOSED to be set up to allow everyone a fair chance, but communism was supposed to make everyone equal. Not saying that the US judicial system is anything like communism, just merely pointing out that the vision of a perfect and fair legal system that protects the innocent got lost along the way. Now, we have huge company's legal departments and patent holding firms crushing individuals and small businesses with litigation that, regardless of guilt, the individual/business must at least pay for defense costs and pay with their own time to show up in court. A loser pays system, as suggested in another post, would be difficult and have many consequences on the legal system that we may not be able to understand without implementing, but the sentiment is correct: something has to change. There has to be a disincentive to participating in this type of litigation.

It's very simple.. have another 2 or 3 judges look at the previous statements of Judge Write, they will surely realize that there is no bias here, and rule that Prenda Law has to suck it up. Eventually, when you gamble, you lose. If you mess with the bull, be prepared to get the horns. Insert other idioms about how doing stupid things will eventually screw you.

This is like an ongoing, comical car crash with each new update being the law firm swerving into yet another parked car, its car becoming more and more banged up, while all along it's still careening headlong towards a police station.

I understand why we have this issue.. the legal system is SUPPOSED to be set up to allow everyone a fair chance, but communism was supposed to make everyone equal. Not saying that the US judicial system is anything like communism, just merely pointing out that the vision of a perfect and fair legal system that protects the innocent got lost along the way. Now, we have huge company's legal departments and patent holding firms crushing individuals and small businesses with litigation that, regardless of guilt, the individual/business must at least pay for defense costs and pay with their own time to show up in court. A loser pays system, as suggested in another post, would be difficult and have many consequences on the legal system that we may not be able to understand without implementing, but the sentiment is correct: something has to change. There has to be a disincentive to participating in this type of litigation.

As examples, you could make the losing party pay the court fees only; you could cap the legal fees that the loser can be asked to pay. You can make the winner pay costs if the loser previously offered a higher settlement than the court awarded - discouraging people from continuing court cases when the loser has already surrendered. There are lots of different bits you can add that stop short of full loser pays all, but that give you some of the effect.

I'm just wondering when these guys get disbarred. They've certainly earned it.

Disbarred?? , It would seem that they were not even barred in the first place.

Is this realy what it has come to? Identity theft and defrauding the Court, just to nail someone who "maybe" downloaded a copyrighted file.

To use 80s jarrong so that the elderly can keep up, This is the equivalent to stealing someones identity, setup fake businesses, Frading the Courts into beliveing that you are actualy a lawyer, all this to extort a few dollars from someone who copied a movie on their VCR. ( based on the single evidence that someone saw the movie being copied from one VCR to another VCR on a specific street address. )

Porn is such an immoral industry that it shouldn't have any legal protection whatsoever. I understand that under the principles of freedom of speech (also known as the Westborough Baptist Church protection law) you can't make it illegal to produce but I don't see any issue with not offering any legal protection to make money off of it.

Well hello, subjective slippery slope, going down?

He doesn't like porn. It shouldn't be legally protected.

I don't like churches. Thus, by the same logic, they shouldn't be legally protected.

Everyone loves being moral until the law bites their pet project in the ass.

I'm just wondering when these guys get disbarred. They've certainly earned it.

Disbarred?? , It would seem that they were not even barred in the first place.

Is this realy what it has come to? Identity theft and defrauding the Court, just to nail someone who "maybe" downloaded a copyrighted file.

To use 80s jarrong so that the elderly can keep up, This is the equivalent to stealing someones identity, setup fake businesses, Frading the Courts into beliveing that you are actualy a lawyer, all this to extort a few dollars from someone who copied a movie on their VCR. ( based on the single evidence that someone saw the movie being copied from one VCR to another VCR on a specific street address. )

Madness!

Good analogy, and correct on almost every point except for the part about "a few dollars from someone". That should read "a few thousand dollars from a few thousand people".

Is this realy what it has come to? Identity theft and defrauding the Court, just to nail someone who "maybe" downloaded a copyrighted file.

They don't care if you did or didn't. If they can shake up the shadow of a case against you and make it look plausible on the surface, they can send you a settlement letter that's expensive enough to be scary to you and worth their while, but too cheap to you to be worth slugging it out in court. The copyrighted materials are mostly there to blackmail you, because who wants to be publicly accused of pirating Obese Teen Clown Butt-Sluts 3? Prenda law firm wasn't set up to defend anybody's copyrights, it was set up to extort money from normal schmucks with the help of the justice system.

Porn is such an immoral industry that it shouldn't have any legal protection whatsoever. I understand that under the principles of freedom of speech (also known as the Westborough Baptist Church protection law) you can't make it illegal to produce but I don't see any issue with not offering any legal protection to make money off of it.

Well hello, subjective slippery slope, going down?

He doesn't like porn. It shouldn't be legally protected.

I don't like churches. Thus, by the same logic, they shouldn't be legally protected.

Everyone loves being moral until the law bites their pet project in the ass.

for starters , copyright is a subsidy on creativity, so a better analogy mighty be a voucher program that doesn't cover religiously affiliated schools, which it's less clear cut. Aside crook having our hands tired by a number of treaties, we could carve out all kind of interesting exceptions. I think it would be an interesting experiment, especially since the most likely result is going to be even more porn and evidence against the current copyright regime. As yet another bonus, slimeballs like this will have to find another racket.